Uranium which produces other isotopes

[karlthepagan]

Uranium can be a good short-hand for the source of all radiation in Eco.

Reactor progression

• Accidental pile: too much uranium in any container produces fission tailings without using the fuel
• Mechanics (level ?): create uranium pile with graphite moderator and manual control rods
• Mechanics 0: Work the uranium pile suffering direct mSv exposure of some level. Very slowly produces used fuel and tailings
• Nuclear 0: work SL-1 era breeder. Steam accident risk without enough higher level nuclear labor and/or without PROMPTLY inputting a large amount of labor (# of players per reactor server config?)
• Industry (level ?): create uranium enrichment to make SL-1 possible
• Nuclear (level 2-7): higher tier reactors, early reactors all require research papers, level 5+ reactors fewer research papers, level 7 mass produced / no papers. Progression to lower labor, wider safety margins
• The balance of plant required for a 10 MW reactor is about the same for a 200 MW reactor, then the plant costs go up linerarly.
• Reactor containment is trivial for < 10 MW, costs for containment rise faster than the output scales up and around 1-2 GW becomes uneconomical.

Production of new isotopes:

• Uranium (ore item) is reacted (criticality with labor for safety) to make used fuel (ore item)
• used fuel is processed (expensive and might produce fission tailings) to make fission products (stacking items) + depleted uranium (ore item)
• fission products (all stacking items) is processed (cheaper than reprocessing fuel) to make advanced isotopes (used for advanced fuel like TRISO, MOX etc), RTG isotopes, medical isotopes, and fission tailings (actinides?)
• all reactors create some amount of tritium (tailings) based on quality of labor even if there is no water technically present, miniscule to annoying level based on quality of labor
• isotope details are in #1394 comments
• future technology (shine reactor, low MW breeder reactors, etc) can make fission products or specific isotopes without reprocessing used fuel

Nuclear accidents

• reactor steam explosions without containment (a la Chernobyl) create fallout that rapidly populates fission tailings
• modern to advanced reactors have accident possibility (server config) of various degrees depending on quality and promptness of labor added

[karlthepagan]

Power and utilities: #951 Power grids and electricity markets: #1256